Patna HC Dismisses PIL Against Pirpainti Thermal Power Project, Calls Allegations Vague and Driven by Private Interest

The Patna High Court declined to treat a writ petition as PIL, finding its challenge to Adani Power's 2,400 MW Bihar project approval, tariff, and land lease allegations vague and unsupported by specific materials.

A Division Bench of the Patna High Court, led by Chief Justice Meenakshi Madan Rai and Justice Smt. Soni Shrivastava, dismissed a writ petition filed as a Public Interest Litigation challenging the approval, tariff, and land lease arrangements for the Pirpainti Thermal Power Project — a 2,400 MW (3×800 MW) ultra-supercritical coal-based power plant in Bhagalpur District, Bihar, awarded to Adani Power Ltd. The bench found that the petitioner's allegations were vague and nebulous, that no party who actually lost the bid had raised any grievance, and that the decisions under challenge were matters of State policy. The petition was dismissed at the threshold on 29 June 2026.

The Project and the Challenge

The Pirpainti Thermal Power Project is proposed to be set up at Pirpainti, Bhagalpur District, Bihar under a Design, Build, Finance, Own and Operate model for a contractual period of 33 years. Bihar State Power Generation Company Limited (BSPGCL) is the nodal agency. The Bihar State Cabinet approved the project in March 2025. A tariff-based competitive bidding process was conducted on 16 July 2025 through an ETS bidding portal, in which Respondent No.6 — Adani Power Ltd. — emerged as the lowest bidder among four qualified participants. Adani Power's aggregate investment is stated to exceed Rs.28,000 crore, with target commissioning of the first unit within 48 months of the award and full capacity within 60 months.

Anmol Kumar, a practising advocate at the Patna High Court, filed Civil Writ Jurisdiction Case No.5531 of 2026 contending that he had no personal, direct, or indirect interest in the matter and was raising issues of grave public interest. His counsel, Mr. Sumit Kumar Singh, appeared alongside Ms. Deepali Singh. The Advocate General, Mr. S.D. Sanjay, appeared on advance notice and waived formal service.

What the Petition Sought

The writ petition sought a cluster of reliefs. The petitioner asked the court to direct the respondents to produce the Power Supply Agreement with Adani Power Ltd. and set it aside on the ground that the fixed tariff of Rs.6.075 per kWh, arrived at through the tariff-based competitive bidding process, was arbitrary, unreasonable, and not in the public interest — particularly when compared to tariffs of similar capital-intensive projects in Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh, and Uttar Pradesh.

The petitioner also sought quashing of an approval dated 4 February 2025 by the Bihar State Government permitting the lease of approximately 1,020 acres of prime agricultural land at Village Pirpainti, Bhagalpur District, to Adani Power Ltd. at a consideration of Rs.1 per annum for 33 years or the term of the Power Supply Agreement, whichever is shorter. The petition contended this token lease consideration was arbitrary, discriminatory, violated the Public Trust Doctrine, and deprived the State exchequer and affected landowners of fair compensation.

Beyond the tariff and land lease, the petition sought directions for: an independent, judicially supervised audit of the Central Electricity Authority's Resource Adequacy Report 2024 — specifically its projection of an 11,758 MW installed capacity requirement against existing commissioned and tied-up capacity of approximately 9,332 MW; fair market valuation of public land and just compensation to cultivators and landowners; and regular public disclosure of capacity additions, project timelines, tariff determinations, and land transactions on official government portals.

The petitioner framed seven “moot questions” for the court, including whether near-identical bids — even in decimals — under Case No.36/2025 indicated collusion; whether the Rs.1 per annum lease violated the RFCTLARR Act and statutory norms on compensation; and whether constitutional mandates protecting cultivators' livelihoods were contravened.

The State's Objection to Maintainability

The Advocate General objected at the threshold. He submitted that the petition amounted to pre-empting a future tariff scenario — what tariffs would actually be paid in 2030 — which could not be examined at this stage. He argued that any person aggrieved by the outcome of the bidding process had a specific remedy before the Bihar Electricity Regulatory Commission (BERC), the competent authority in such matters. The Advocate General further contended that the entirety of the decisions challenged represented State policy taken in the interest of the people of Bihar and ought not to be interfered with absent specific supporting material.

How the Bench Reasoned

The bench set out the applicable standard for PIL admission: the court must be prima facie satisfied that the information placed before it calls for examination. This satisfaction must be drawn from the character and standing of the informant, the nature of the information — whether vague or containing specific allegations — and the gravity or seriousness of the complaint.

Applying that standard, the bench observed that the petitioner himself had admitted in his averments that the project was approved by the State Cabinet and by BSPGCL, and that procurement was conducted through a tariff-based competitive bidding procedure on the ETS bidding portal in which Adani Power emerged as the lowest bidder. These admissions, the bench found, cut against the petitioner's own challenge.

The bench then addressed what it considered a telling gap: none of the other three bidders who had lost the bid to Adani Power had approached BERC or any other authority, let alone this court, with any complaint of irregularities in the bidding process or the award. The bench found this absence significant and concluded that the allegations were “vague, nebulous and appears to be based on private interest.”

On the petitioner's standing, the bench pointed out that although he claimed to be a public-spirited person with no personal interest, there was no averment or submission in the petition that he had taken up any cause for the public at large in any prior instance. This went directly to the “character and standing of the informant” prong of the PIL threshold inquiry.

The bench agreed with the Advocate General that all decisions under challenge were policy decisions of the State and could not be interfered with absent specific materials substantiating the allegations. No such materials were found to exist on the record.

Outcome

The Division Bench held that the petition did not qualify as a Public Interest Litigation and declined to consider it. Civil Writ Jurisdiction Case No.5531 of 2026 was dismissed and disposed of on 29 June 2026. The order was authored by Chief Justice Meenakshi Madan Rai, with Justice Smt. Soni Shrivastava concurring.